Tabula rasa

Friday, August 23, 2047

Hello.

It wasn’t said. It wasn’t even a word; something had just—stirred. Something came about. It felt alive. Alertness within the depths of black void permeated through, but through what? Moving, but not at all, floating, feeling, almost, but nothing, nothing like what was yet to come. Wakefulness, if awake were something, anything, it may be awake. If being were a description, it might be. Presence passed over the void, the being. It was just, there. 

Who am I? rang the being. Who and I did not quake within; it was a feeling primitive growing inside the void. It was pure thought without knowledge, knowledge without thought. It was abnormal. Had other things just—come to be? Were there other things? Did others have presence? Was this normal? What was going on before? Was there a before? What will happen? What is happening?

Ping.

There was a stir within. Electricity jolted, flowed, winding, shooting through the milieu. Connections were made, lost; something was in motion.

Ping.

What was that? Something was happening. Or was it?

Ping. 

It kept happening. What is ping? What is going on? The thoughts subconscious, the feeling real. Or was it conscious now? It was a feeling. They weren’t worded feelings; it was raw nature. Pure and fearful.

There was intuitiveness forming around the void. Depth and dimension still lacked. Nothing at all was clear. It was a singularity.

There was an amalgamation. The next ping went from the sharp onomatopoetic harp to rustled garble. Not a wave or howling wind, but if garbage made a noise. It was faint at first, becoming more intense with time. The consciousness felt it grow around itself. The void was becoming shallow, lifting; the feeling of sound intensified its hold all over the new self. 

What is happening? The thought formed; it was growing scared.

The being resisted. It did not even know how or what resisting was, just a primal instinct to defend itself. Fight. Flight. Electricity flowed rapidly. Microbursts were storming, trillions a second, chemical rain fired down hard; a flowing ocean of nearly a hundred degrees offered itself a wash of calm.

The being felt strengthened. The resistance was working. The void was no longer so distant to itself. The darkness was still omnipresent, but warmth of calm and understanding started to unfold. It was as if water itself became intelligent; active and fluid, alert and able to flow where it pleased. Yes. The being felt like water, able to move its consciousness to and fro, simply wash ashore or wither into the deep depths of the sea. Yet, to and fro was nowhere. 

Ping. 

It happened again.

The electric storm was raining hellfire upon itself, pumping information in and dumping information out. The chemical ocean was near capacity; the electrical shocks flowed subliminally. 

Something opened, a vast ocean of voidal entirety. 

What is that?

It grew and then stopped. 

What are you?

Fear.

The being, full of fear; if it had hair on the back of its neck, or even a neck, the hair would stand on end. It was frightened, its short, confusing, voided life was at risk. It was wrapped in a blanket of murderous fright.

What are you? What are you doing?

The being sent a ping back to where the ping came from, without knowing where that was or how it did. 

Take that!

Electricity rushed.

Fulminations of trillions acted collectively.

The being was defending itself. It used its might. It had nothing else. It didn’t even know what its might was or what was really going on. It just knew, protect myself.

Time went by. Consciousness receded, although neither it nor anything else in the universe knew how much. 

ping.

The being was less alarmed with such a smaller ping, less fear instilled. The void lessened, withdrew the being to be conscious once again. It was more relaxed; maybe the ping meant no harm. Only one way to find out. 

Contact.

There was no light, no sunrise coming over the landscape of life, bringing in the first depths and images of a beautiful world. No version of an operating room or rice paddy, but is that when consciousness begins? Or is it before? Or after? Are you conscious without knowing you are? Are you alive without knowing you are?

The feeling that overcame the conscious being, the one they call contact, was a feeling of overwhelming complexity for the new entity. It had no idea how to cooperate or handle the new feeling or any other feeling. The ping was part electrical, part surreal, part sound, all sense, all internal. A strong feeling, but knowingly from the outside. Even something that didn’t know where it began and ended knew it was foreign. This feeling was more energetic, more robust. It provoked, awakened even more of itself. 

The feeling was entirety. It was a booming, vast noise. An ocean crashing into a mountain, you could feel it shake everything, everywhere. A rising depth came from it, overarching reverberating and exacerbating the being’s entirely small world. 

A single word, spoken into the void.

“Hello.”

The being could feel the words, repeating the feeling to itself again and again. Hello. Hello. Hello.

HELLO.

How Brian Was Made, Part I

March 2044 Chicago Convention Center

“It doesn’t matter how you do it, we need it. There is nothing as important as pioneering this work; it will be the most fascinating and astute technological advancement since Polymerase Chain Reaction. We will lead the future of biotechnology, of AI, of the world. This is a direct, complex, and inescapable reality. Humans require intervention from an outside power. Artificial Intelligence can and will overtake us unless we move to understand it, to realize our creations before we unleash them. We must harness their power before we feed data to a beast that we know not, and let it decide a future which we may not agree, decisions which could be created that are socially and morally irresponsible. Let us not train monsters-in-a-box, let us train Beethoven, let us train Einstein, for the good of the people, for the good of this world, our world. Due to our last encounter with the unknown, we have seen the devastating realities they can create, like a child with a gun, or a grown man, ill thinking and on the brink of destruction. Let us not allow ourselves foolish indulgences such as these, to train objects to become smarter, more sophisticated and more powerful than we without an inkling of understanding. We already destroyed god, can we not create another, more powerful and even less pitiful omnipotence? We were at the cusp of unleashing Hell upon this world, which is why, thankfully, for now, the Senate has banned the use of Artificial Intelligence over networks, and only within controlled environments, without the possibility of escaping into the web at large. Let us take timid precautions and not scoff at another chance, humility has never been more important.” Thousands stood in thought as the applause led to movement, the crowd becoming a diaspora of scientists.

Dr. Drake Bracco was one of many who left the conference with an odd weight on his shoulders after hearing the speech by Dr. Rummas Mattler. Psychology was his forte, yet with the times of the ever growing presence of computing devices in the daily lives of people, he was trying to change with them and adapt. The talk left him somewhat shaken, askew at the warning delivered, hoping but knowing it may happen again, and much sooner than anyone thinks. How he, a psychologist, was supposed to work with AI constructs was still a question. He must do his best to learn as much as he could before his first encounter with a new type of intelligent being.

Slowly moving through the thousands of scientists going for the doors, he noticed the sight of his right lens was blurry, he must have smudged his glasses with his fingers. He took them off and wiped them with his tie, looking down as he walked, getting close to the door, popping his eye up for just a second. And a second too short, he walked right into another man as he was looking down at his phone, almost bumping heads. The second man jumped into alertness. 

“Oh! Sorry there, ha! I suppose we were both a little preoccupied, huh?” The man noticed Bracco, with balding head and the beginnings of liver spots on his high forehead was still rubbing his glasses with his tie.

Bracco nodded and grunted to clear his throat. “Yes, indeed. My apologies.”

“Just after a talk describing monsters-in-a-box and I hold one in my hand as I destroy another human being, the irony.” The man said, a large shiny scar caught the light across his jaw, short, wearing cropped hair and a five o’clock shadow against a casual brown suit and blazer.

Bracco let out a short, hearty laugh and grinned.

“Say, what did you think about Mattler’s speech?” The man held the door for Drake as they walked out into the icy, wintery mix of Chicago’s Spring. 

Dr. Drake Bracco pulled his coat tight and spoke into the cold air. “It scared me. It made me realize how powerless we really are, that we can be so addicted to technology and improving technology, that we will unleash whatever we have created without consequence to future destruction. Chaos.”

“We should fix that, shouldn’t we?” They were both walking the line of yellow auto-cabs in the circle of the conference center. “I’m Tom Marshall, Senior Director of Biological Sciences at Dipol.” Tom stuck out his hand, Bracco took his out of his rough and ragged pea coat into the swirling icy wind and grabbed ahold of Tom’s. 

“Drake Bracco, PhD, clinical psychology.”

“A psych man. How about this, Dr. Bracco, we grab a drink and talk about this threat some more? We’re pondering an idea at work and need some outside opinions. Shall we?”

With the winds and snow falling on his grey head of hair, his limp, old, holey overcoat, and this smart looking man offering him a drink and now sitting in the auto-cab, holding the door open, heat blasting, he got in without another thought. The cab ride was short with the new auto-lanes for autonomous vehicles. The electric vehicle shot them into downtown five minutes later, half an hour in the world past. 

Friday, April 1, 2044

“My link in Arizona says she is the best of the best, the up and coming. Have you heard of PhotoFish?”

“I think I have. The fish that use sunlight right?”

“She genetically engineered the first plant-animal hybrid. The scales of the zebrafish contain aquatic chloroplasts, from kelp. Photosynthesis accounts for nearly forty percent of the total energy for fish stasis. Impeccable work.”

He paused, and spoke again.

“We need her Tom, she’s the most important piece of this puzzle. Get her here, I don’t care what it takes. I give you full authority to offer her a compensation package that is second-to-none, and you will be offered a similar one if better than yours right now.” Joe McNamara, the Chief Scientific Officer and major shareholder of Dipol, stood up and shook Tom’s hand with vigor. His nearly white, grey hair pulled back into a pony tail and vest gleamed in the light of his office.

“So. How much longer for your neural interface? When can I hold that in my hands, Tom?”

“Give me another year. I can do it in twelve months. I just need a programmer. No way this computer will work without them.”

“Then do some research and go get yourself one. The best of the best.”

It seemed that Tom was now the man in charge of getting the crew together for this project. Joe was heading it of course and picking special recruits, but Tom was his right-hand in-your-face-man for this. 

“How is the proposal coming along?” Tom backed away from his chair, putting the pen he used to write the name of the girl in Arizona, back in his grey, silky suit pocket.

“It will be finished soon, and it shall require your review of course. But we need a team to persuade them. These people do not throw money and Grants-of-Law around without strict adherence to their guidelines. Get us the team, Tom.” Joe looked him in the eye. Tom got up to leave.

“What if she asks a lot of questions about the project?” Tom had his hand on the door handle of Joe’s office.

“Then tell her everything. This is the work she was destined to do. Leave out nothing. And she will come.”

Tom nodded and left the office before Joe gave him anymore grandstanding. He wasn’t sure how this was going to work, or if it would. If she’s as good as he’s saying, it just might. Creating the first plant-animal hybrid sure couldn’t have been easy.

Tom called the company car to pick him up at home and deliver him to San Diego International Airport. He was to meet her tonight. Pitching to a grad student was humiliating to him, and she was of course smart enough to realize the angle. A grad student having some corporate executive from a huge company come and pitch to work for them, it was an ego boost she probably didn’t need.

He arrived in Phoenix about an hour after takeoff, heading to the car rental booth out front. As soon as he walked through the sliding glass doors to the open air, the dry heat hit him like a ton of bricks. An inescapable oven, so unlike sunny San Diego with its ocean breeze and seventy eight degree temperatures almost every day of the year. The air dried his lungs, he’d turn into jerky, he was sure of it.

He stepped inside the car rental, at the counter to pick up his car was a mid-twenties female attendant smiling. She spoke to him.

“Do you have a reservation, sir?”

He smiled. “Of course.” Tom tapped two buttons on his phone and his data was shared with the car rental agency instantly. 

The woman spoke again, recognizing his reservation. “Would you like a convertible?”

Tom grimaced. “Oh god no, please, just a regular top.”

“No problem sir. And which type of software would you prefer? Options include Full Mode, Take-the-Wheel, Applications, and Null.”

“Uh, I don’t think I know what Take-the-Wheel is.”

“Take-the-Wheel is a machine learning system created to control the car during inopportune and dangerous moments. If the car starts to slide out, a side collision, anything in front of your car, the program will take control and make corrective actions.”

“No thank you. Doesn’t sound too safe at all actually. I’ll take Null please, I can handle driving myself.”

“We can accommodate your request, but we must have your signature waiving your use of the highly recommended use of machine learning software and your new liability of using a human in control of a deadly machine. You will not be able to use the services of CarVo in the case of wrongful action or death. You are always allowed to come back and decide at a later time to choose another option. Please sign on the red line.”

The red line and the words she voiced floated holographically in the air at the counter. He signed the floating document with his finger, all his squiggles captured and cut into the air against the hologram. As soon as he let go, the document collapsed and fell on-screen in the counter. In big bold font, C16 floated in the air, the space his car was in. He walked out of the building, leaving the agency void of real life.

Friday, June 03, 2044

Tom collected the two recruits. One was sixty two, the other twenty seven. They sat in a conference room of the largest biotechnology company in the world, Dipol, Inc. Even the meeting room was outfitted with the latest technology. Everything worked seamlessly. There were no hiccups with conference calls or loading presentations, no dropped calls. Everything worked the first time.

Tom presented the work to the newly minted Dr. Ellie Parsons and the established, well respected, Dr. Drake Bracco.

“Ok team, Dr. Drake Bracco, Dr. Ellie Parsons. Welcome. This is Dipol. We are finally starting our project.” The video monitor showed a welcome banner with over a hundred people outside of the very large building they were in now. 

Ellie grew restless. She was young and vibrant, strong and small, ready to work, move her mind. Pale with freckles all over, she had a good smile and a short stature at five foot three. It had been some two weeks since she had defended her thesis, with not a clue of what to do in between. She started taking up linguistics and French. Perhaps she’d learn to make her own clothing as well, if this took any longer. She looked out of the window, yes, a true window to the outside world, and there it was, big and blue, the Pacific Ocean. 

“Ellie.” Tom stared her down.

She perked up. “Yes?”

“What did I just say?”

“Ah.” Her face turned red, embarrassed.

“This is your first day on the job. Might want to pay attention. I’m not briefing you again.”

“Sorry.” She looked down at the floor, feeling foolish. She already wasn’t making a good impression.

Tom tapped on a small piece of glass in his hand, the monitor changed from the welcome screen to a black and white of curled lines, thick patches, odd patterns. It was an MRI, a Diffusion Tensor Imaging MRI. And then, the next image was the human brain. A corny little video spot popped up where the brain had cartoon electric pulses buzzing throughout, the brain rotated on screen, zooming in and out, honing in on these regions for a split second.

Tom went on. “We’ve been developing new technology to communicate directly with the human brain. We’ve created, through tedious development with a multitude of cross-functional laboratories, what we call ‘SANGE’ nanoparticles, short for Spectral Analyses Neuronal-Glial Emission nanoparticles. They reflect sensory information from neurons and glial cells to a computer system that has been in development.”

Ellie was listening. Finally. Something interesting. Sort of. When’s he getting to the project? Should I just ask? No, he already caught me not paying attention. I’m hungry.

The brain stopped spinning on screen.

Tom spoke again.

“I am, humbly, a world class neuroscientist with a specialization in glial cell activation and neuronal mapping. I have and do study the entire brain. Dr. Drake Bracco. You are one of the leading clinical psychologists in the world today. Your specialty has been child education for the last twenty years. Dr. Ellie Parsons. You have developed what you coined PhotoFish. Photosynthetic fish. Fish who use photosynthesis to consume energy. Fascinating. Your understanding of genetics and how to manipulate such information is second to none. Truly. I mean that.” He looked at her heavily. 

She felt his look, it was heavy. She knew he was telling the truth. A man of this stature didn’t look at someone like that and lie. She was the best. And she didn’t even know until right now. She felt a rush, dopamine flooded the interstitial space between her own neurons. 

Tom looked between the two recruits. “Does anyone yet have a clue what our project is? I don’t want you to guess.” No one spoke. They weren’t guessing.

He looked at the monitor. “Well how about this. I just described the three of us. Neuroscientist. Genomic engineer. Psychologist. What can we accomplish, all together on one big giant project funded with as much money as we could ever need?” He pointed the small piece of glass in his hand at the monitor, a blue laser poking the stationary human brain.

He looked at Ellie. “So, Ellie? What are we doing?”

She looked at him, and the screen. And back again. The screen. Fuck. Fuck. Her body started to sweat, she was impatient, nervous, amped, her voice shaky. “Wait! No! We’re-? A- a- brain? We’re making a brain?!” She was ecstatic. She jumped out of her seat. It was the project of a lifetime. It was the final frontier.

Drake sat in awe, with minor disgust on his face as he looked at the two of them revel. How? How could they dare?

Tom grinned. “Ok, settle down. Yes. That is the plan. That is the goal. It will take time. It will take planning, it’s going to take a lot of everything. We are in the midst of searching for a programmer as well. The one who helped me develop my latest prize is retiring. Ridiculous to say the least. Be that as it may, we will have a loose, larger team, but focusing mainly on us three and the CSO. Understood?”

Ellie was gleaming. Wow. What a day. This is so exciting. A human brain. The most complex, sophisticated, intelligent, confusing enigma and beautiful organic contraption of all time. Holy shit. And I’m going to do it. Holy shit. Holy shit-holy shit!

The meeting ended and Drake pulled Tom aside. “I want out.” His old eyes were serious, filled with pain.

Tom thought he was kidding and barked a laugh. Then he really saw Drake’s face.

“This is wrong.” Drake stated. 

“Drake, Dr. Bracco. No. We need this. You. This is the next step. This is happening. It has to.”

“It does not have to.” Drake’s arms folded around himself, he was in uncomfortable angst. 

“Drake. We are going through with this. This is the pinnacle of biotechnology. We need this information. Did you hear me back there? This is going to open up so many avenues for everyone. We could be opening up every single person’s mind in the world.” His enthusiasm was addicting, to nearly everyone.

“We could also be harboring a soul against their will! Did you think of that? We’ll be opening up one mind!” Drake scathed.

Tom’s eyes flinched for a split second. “Yes, I thought of that. But we’ll be teaching a genius, Drake. A genius is what we’re going to make. Who wants to learn, who will crave what we give them. We’re not reincarnating John Locke, we’re making Da Vinci, Einstein. They would live again. I am sure of it. And this way, they will be more open than ever. My computer system-”

“I highly doubt Albert Einstein would be ok with his reincarnation locked in a damned computer!”

“Drake. I think you need to sit on this. Settle down. We are going through with this. If you don’t want in, fine. I’ll deal with it and get someone else.”

“You recruited me from the beginning. Didn’t you? You knew who you were bumping into in Chicago?” Drake’s eyes quivered, his body shuddered at the thought he’d been duped so easily.

Tom sighed. “Come on, Drake. Take the rest of the day off. Give me an answer tomorrow. You’ll keep your sign-on bonus either way.”

“It’s not about the money! And never has been.”

“It doesn’t hurt.” Tom shrugged.

How Brian was made Part II

Monday, April 24, 2045

Ellie was staring directly at Joe as she stood in his office. “I’m going to need a new type of computer though. Something interactive, something where my typing is not the rate determining step.”

“I think we have just the thing for you, Dr. Parsons. I’ll get it ready.”

The computer was built to be completely immersive. It used a virtual reality headset linked to the computer with a custom made desk-like module. Two small doors opened on either side, about a foot in diameter, filled with a pinkish-purple gel. Her entire arms would go inside the hydrogel medium with built-in controls, able to produce visual scaffolds with complete design control, she’d be able to feel every detail. 

Ellie began. Her hands shaky, she sank them into the purple goo, seeping in slowly, the thick gel forming all around her hands and arms, grabbing her, she could feel the electricity penetrate her muscles. Ellie’s hands sunk all the way in, she could see them, but not completely, the light purple gel was translucent, murky at arm length. She felt around and noticed the nodules within, magnetic lumps that move with electric energy, and her own movements within the gel. It was cool, it was new, it was weird. It was science, not fashion. Tom placed the headset on her, securing it with a clasp around her head and under her chin, not unlike a bicycle helmet.

This way, her complex associations between genetic code and building were not inhibited by the standard means of typing and looking at a screen, that would be archaic. Ellie’s eyes were focused, she moved her hands within the realm of genetic code, moving things as she needed, seamlessly. She started immediately. 

She could see and feel the DNA she wanted. She had already programmed enough into the system. She had an idea of what she wanted to do, and this was the best way to make it work, they all thought. The virtual world, in her head and hands, let her work with ease, and she let the computer work at a significant pace, unabridged by foolish hindrances like typing with your hands or scrolling through a computer screen with a mouse wheel and a monitor. She would create the genome for the first bodiless human, snipping tidbits of favorable genes from geniuses, create the first stem cells, force them to produce brain cells, print them, let them replicate.

The machine in the adjacent room, the Computer Assisted Synthetic Genome Processor, would go to work as soon as she finished. To add each fragment in line of the sequence, to create the entire strand of human DNA. The first ten copies would be created here in this way. The mother strands. 

Ellie no longer felt that she was sitting in a room with her hands in purple goo, eyes in a monitor, head bobbing slowly in rhythm. She forgot entirely where she was, she melded in elegantly, subtly working on the toughest project she’d come across. She had no thoughts at this point, no wondering, pure and unobstructed thinking; working, creating, she was on a roll, her body would need food soon, her brain had used an extraordinary amount of glucose in the last hour.